America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

[FONT=times new roman,times]In an [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]earlier post[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times], I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]sixty years[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?[/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman,times]Why? [/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman,times]One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.[/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman,times]I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]Cloward-Piven Strategy[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.[/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman,times]The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:[/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman,times]The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.[/FONT]
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[FONT=times new roman,times]"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]Discover the Networks.org[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times])[/FONT]
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The chart confirms that the Neo-Cons got control of both Houses of Congress in 1995, and singular control of our government from 2000 to 2006, and yet, as the debt charts prove in Figures 1 & 3 above, even with all that power in 12 years they never controlled spending.

When Mr. Reagan was in office he had a Democratic House and a Republican Senate to deal with. But the âGreat Communicatorâ used the bully pulpit to force both Houses of Congress to go along with his tax cuts on the promise that spending cuts would follow. However, the spending was never reduced. The mixed-party Congress, with no presidential leadership, failed to follow through on reducing spending.

How did Mr. Clinton lead the nation into fiscal responsibility? When there was a Democratic run Congress he worked with them to put a policy in place that the Republicans dumped the minute Mr. Bush entered office. That reasonable and responsible policy was; if you cut taxes you must make a corresponding cut in spending. They called it âpay as you go.â We need that kind of responsible leadership again. Under President Clinton the Republican Congress lived within the âpay as you goâ rule and spending was extremely well controlled.

The Republicans rapidly abandoned this rule when Mr. Bush entered office in 2000 and deficit spending started skyrocketing immediately. Republicans have proven they do not have the guts or the political will to do what it takes to get spending under control. For the countryâs sake we were hoping a new Democratic Congress would change the direction of this otherwise certain economic train wreck. They tried, but could not overcome Republicans using the filibuster more times than in any other Congress to block all progressive bills. Republicans chose gridlock over progress.

One thing the chart above makes clear, in stark contrast to their rhetoric, is that in the last 60 years when Republicans held all the power, they never used it to reduce the debt; in fact they always increased it. If you want deficit reduction you need Democrats in control, because the âborrow and spendâ Republicans have never done it on their own.